Since I first moved to Santa Fe twenty-five years ago, I’ve longed to gain an authentic and appropriate understanding of the people among whom we live and who were here long before us, and will remain.

Women artists are always in danger of extinction; already low on the pay scale, often with too many children and no support, they can hardly be expected to devote their limited time and energy to becoming proficient professional poets, painters, sculptors…

Wolf Pen is the way many people in this country lived, when we were still agrarian and made do with much less, in the material sense, than we consider essential now. We lived in a few small rooms, we farmed, milled, carpentered, built, ran cattle or horses—managed to survive.

The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is especially prized here because of her Mexican antecedents, and yet, even though she represents a beleaguered minority, she must still be seen only in the terms set by the church, terms that have constricted the image, and confused women followers, for hundreds of years.

It was the 1980’s and the three of us-Julia, Joan and I-were possessed by the spirit of the times-that energizing, reckless, laughing spirit that was born of the modern women’s movement. We could do anything. Even stir up trouble.